Artificial Intelligence and International Relations: An Overview

WithPhilip A. Schrodt

This chapter provides a brief background of relevant developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in order to provide some perspective on the concepts used in AI/International Relations (IR). It discusses projects that use text as a source of information for development of models rendered in artificial language. In contrast to many other modeling approaches, the AI/IR community is characterized by a healthy level of internal debate. The AI label poses two additional problems. The most severe is guilt by association with "the AI hype": the inflated claims made for AI by the popular media, science fiction, and consulting firms. The chapter attempts to structure the various sets of problems studied in AI/IR. Rule-based systems are the most common form of AI/IR model, and even systems that go well beyond rules, such as the Japanese Energy Supply Security Expert simulation, contain substantial amounts of information in the form of rules.